Last night I was playing with the light equipment I ordered (thank you for the help Laura). I purchased 2 of the expanding tripods that I think Jinnylea recommended and several clamp on lights. My clamp lights keep sliding down. Any tricks to get them to stay in place? I haven’t made it to Ikea yet. I need to rearrange my plants in order to share lights more efficiently. Things are really crowded on the windowsills right now, plus I’m babysitting a sick cactus of my dad’s.

Question #1

What is the ideal distance for the lights? I know some of you have burned some leaves.

While playing last night, I found what I think is scale on my two Meyer cuttings. They’re the same trees I found it on a few weeks ago. I used a Qtip and wiped all the leaves down with alcohol again.

Question #2

What else should I be doing to prevent it from spreading?

This morning my Target Pink Lemon arrived. It is a little sad looking. It was tinier than I expected. There’s holes in some of the leaves. Something was snacking on it. It also looked pretty parched and lifeless. When I opened it, the entire rootball was out of the dirt and just sitting on top of a pile of bark.

I think it will recover. I potted it and watered it. I’ll look at it again tonight and see if it perked up more.

After the scale, I took everybody outside for a bath. It was about 50 degrees today, so I hosed them down. I’ve noticed that my two largest trees aren’t absorbing water well and I’m worried the soil is too dry, so I wanted to get them good and drenched.

Here’s everybody enjoying a little sunshine today.